Hi, everyone! Today we want to talk about gaming disorders and how they can be treated.
First of all, let's talk about the meaning of "gaming disorder". Gaming disorder is considered as an addiction to videogames, which is an impaired control over gaming. A person with gaming disorder prioritizes playing videogames over other activities made in a daily basis or interests, and despite the negative consequences the affected person still prioritizes gaming over other factors. The person can't control how many time it had been playing videogames and even if the person considers that the caused impact is harmful for him or her, it can get even worse; so we can say it can also affect to his or her self-awareness.
The aforementioned gaming disorder contributes to a sudden and enormous change of behaviour to the affected person. As we said before, that change of behaviour makes the person forget about other activities apart from playing videogames, and it also can contribute to the loss of social or even familiar relationships. In the worst of the cases, gaming disorders can contribute to depression.
Gaming disorders occur because videogames offer some rewards after "beating a level", and the providen motivation of beating levels for obtaining more rewards can contribute to an excess of playing. This is extremely dangerous, especially in those games with a huge or even infinite number of levels. Gaming behaviour, which can be considered as the behaviour a person has over videogames, raises upon the completion of levels; to the point it affects to the main behaviour of the person (and to the born of a gaming disorder).
The consequences of gaming disorders are, among others:
Psychological: Alteration of daily schedule, loss of relationships (being social and familiar the most dangerous), drop of school grades, depression, anxiety, insomnia.
Physical: Headaches, wrist pain.
The treatment for gaming disorder depends on the victim. However, upon studies it is said that the best method for treating gaming disorder is to try to make the victim acquire again his or her lost self-awareness. If the victim recognises that he or she has gaming disorder, he or she will regain self-awareness and try to beat it via doing other daily activities. Another effective treatment for gaming disorder is the use of regular therapies.
What do you think about the concept of gaming disorder? And how it can affect us?